Essex

Wild Essex

A short extract from a wonderful documentary with Robert Macfarlane: The Other Side of Essex – Unexpected Wilderness Here

Hatfield Forest

Hatfield is owned by the National Trust is the only remaining intact Royal Hunting Forest and dates from the time of the Norman kings. The great forest expert Oliver Rackham wrote in his book about the Forest entitled The Last Forest (1976) that: “Hatfield is of supreme interest in that all the elements of a medieval Forest survive: deer, cattle, coppice woods, pollards, scrub, timber trees, grassland and fen …. As such it is almost certainly unique in England and possibly in the world …….The Forest owes very little to the last 250 years ….. Hatfield is the only place where one can step back into the Middle Ages to see, with only a small effort of the imagination, what a Forest looked like in use.” Read